TO:
FROM:
DATE:
SUBJECT:
Arash Farhadian
Manraj Athwal
September 16, 2016
Review of Your ENGL 301 Definitions Assignment
I have reviewed your English 301 definitions assignment on the term “mitochondria.” Thank
you for your good work! You did an excellent job giving the parenthetical, sentence, and
expanded definitions and providing appropriate visuals and referencing. I would like to offer the
following suggestions:
Audience: As a fellow life science student, the material you covered was easy for me to
understand. Even if I had no knowledge on mitochondria, I still think that you did an excellent
job explaining what mitochondria are and what its purpose is. I don’t think the intended
audience would require a significant amount of outside knowledge to understand your
definitions.
Purpose: The parenthetical definition is written well and the clarifying phrase in parenthesis
does a good job clarifying the term. In your sentence definition, upon stating that
“mitochondria” belong to the broader class of “organelles,” you use an analogy to explain how
mitochondria work similarly to a digestive system. In a sentence definition, you usually want to
distinguish how the term differs from other items in its general class (i.e. how mitochondria
differ from other organelles). Instead of comparing it to the digestive system, you could
compare how mitochondria differ from other organelles such as ribosomes or lysosomes.
Expansion Strategies: The expanded definition had perfect flow in my opinion and did a perfect
job to help the audience understand what the mitochondria is and its context in the cell and in
biology. In paragraph 6, you did an excellent job of explaining the endosymbiotic theory of how
mitochondria evolved. You took a very relevant and complex theory and explained it perfectly
using simple terms that the intended audience would easily understand.
Language: There were a few different cases in the expanded definition where you used too
much jargon. For example, sentence 5, paragraph 8: “This essentially parallels the significance
of microvilli in the intestine, which help increase nutrient absorption by increasing surface
area.” In this sentence you use an example that has new unrelated science jargon to help
explain what the role of cristae is in the mitochondria. Perhaps using an example that the
audience is already familiar will make the comparison clearer. There were a few other instances
where unexplained science jargon was used like “ribosome” in sentence 8, paragraph 5, and
“cellular respiration” in sentence 2, paragraph 9. In sentence 3, you also give examples of
organic molecules, “pyruvate” and “acetyl CoA.” Simply ending that sentence with “organic
molecules” is enough to get your point across.
Visuals: Both figures you used complemented the text very well. Figure 1 helped visualize the
endosymbiotic theory and Figure 2 helped to help visualize the complex structure of
mitochondria. Also, both visuals were correctly labeled,
References: The only thing I would advise you to do is add references for the two visuals you
used. Besides that, both of your in-text citations and your references section was done
perfectly using APA format.
Overall, your assignment had good flow, good organization, and met all of the criteria.
Particularly, you stated well what the criteria and learning objectives were for the assignment
in your introduction. Also, the sentence and parenthetical definitions were well written. The
most effective element of your document were the expanded definitions you chose and the
visuals because they really helped visualize the complexity of mitochondria.